Maddox

About: Jessica Maddox (BA '12, MA '15, PhD '18) teaches courses in media studies, cultural studies, and social media. Her research examines content creators, influencers, and social media platforms.

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Education

Ph.D., Mass Communication, University of Georgia, 2018

M.A., Mass Media Arts, University of Georgia, 2015

B.A., English & Sociology, University of Georgia, 2012

Research Interests and Activities

Dr. Maddox specializes in pop culture and labor on social media. She is the author of The Internet is for Cats: How Animal Images Shape our Digital Lives (Rutgers University Press, 2023) and the of Anatomy of an Internet Scandal: Content Creators and the Politics of Going Viral (University of California Press, forthcoming). She has authored or co-authored over two dozen articles in New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, Information, Communication, and Society, Television & New Media, the International Journal of Communication, the International Journal of Cultural Studies, and Feminist Media Studies. In addition to her academic work, she has been quoted over two hundred times on social media in global media, including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, CNN, Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, the BBC, Denmark’s Politiken, Germany’sScience Notes, France’s La Croix, and Pakistan World Television English. She has also published original social media op-eds in Wired, Slate, Nieman Lab, and The Conversation.

Since 2023, Dr. Maddox has been a member of a national coalition working to advance child social media labor protections, also known as “family vlogging” or “child influencer” bills. She consulted on California’s Child Content Creator Rights Act, which was passed into law in 2024, and has provided testimony, letters of support, and educational memoranda in Utah, New York, and Missouri. She has also consulted for top tech companies, as well as numerous organizations seeking to adapt to a rapidly changing social media world. 

Teaching Specialties

Dr. Maddox teaches courses in media studies, cultural studies, and social media. She created one of the world’s first courses in professionalizing online content creation and influencing. 

Experience

Prior to returning to Grady, Dr. Maddox spent seven years as a professor of digital media at the University of Alabama.